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Topic: My little pony advice (Read 1925 times)

Me and a friend are starting a MLP:FIM RP, now other than a couple of episodes on tv I watched with my daughters I dont know much about it. The plan I belive is to have it set away from the cartoon so probably another village so we have no fanboys (one guy dying over being shining knight whoever he is) and they will all start as foals, progress to teenagers and get their "cutie-mark?" then become mere/stallions. What I want is to plot lines as I can see there is no mechanic for fighting so I presume this is a pasifist game. The e.g. in the rules are a kite in a tree and helping move a wheel barrow full of apples. I am wondering if people could help elaberate what the kind of missions we could give the group.

Not sure what foals could do, so maybe that could just be early life in each characters Bio?For the young yars, they're mostly going to do general chores, with a chance that they'll take interest in what their Parents/Guardians do for a living. This would then lead onto what their cutie mark would be.Once the Character has gained their Cutie Mark, then they can do tasks and "Missions" that relate to their talent and mark.

The tricky part I can see is who decideds who gets a Cutie Mark and when do they get a CM, and heck, what is the CM even for.MLP S1E12 is a good starting point for Cutie Mark background. Pretty much any Cutie Mark Crusaders episode can be useful as well.

Keeping it non-combat may be tricky. If you're still having Statlines, Strength and Intelligence would be simple characteristics for the small chance of an physical conflict and they're useful for most tasks anyway.

As the guy running a MLP RP on this forum, it'd be strange if I didn't give any advice.

Firstly, don't use my RP as a guide. It isn't a nice, cheerful setting, it's full of combat and has even had some deaths. So yeah, ignore my RP.

Second, you should probably realise that while actual fighting is fairly uncommon, even in the show Equestria isn't that nice. Ponies have at various points been shown to be just as greedy, selfish, dishonest and mistrustful as your average human. There's a cut-throat fashion industry, some upper class political struggles and con artists. And that's just the ponies.

The show mostly takes place in Ponyville, which is right next to an evil, enchanted forest, which is why so many mythical creatures show up there, but there's evidence that they could live elsewhere as well. Dragons, Hydras, Manticores, Timberwolves, Parasprites, Vampire Bats and Cockatrices have all appeared in the show, and most have been defeated in non violent ways.

Then there's the weird magical artifacts. A magical amulet that granted great power and great insanity was on sale in a strange little shop. A comic book store apparantly sell comics that can literally suck ponies into them so they can live out the story. Poison Joke and Hearts Desire are both plants with unusual magical properties. Love poisons have made an appearance.

I'm fairly new as a GM, so I can't really suggest storylines, but MLP has a lot of stuff that make it an interesting setting. With a bit of creativity, any of the things above could be turned into stories. It might be helpful to know the ages of the players.

I'd reccommend looking at this webcomic for some more ideas. It's made with screenshots of the show, and works on the premise that instead of being a story for the show, it's a story of a D&D game. It starts out fairly adventure-y, then the players derail the plot spectacurlarly and turns more slice of life.

You could just check out the Discord bit from the show. Its not really combat, but means that no individual character can actually win. It gives you a villain that can operate at the speed of plot and counter any early attempts to thwart him "because he can". It means they will all have to work as a full team. Maybe set up characters that have weaknesses that the other characters can fill in.

Well, if you want foal-level plot lines and an ethos closer to the show than "my unicorn casts colour spray", why not take it at face value and rip off children's books? Enid Blyton's stuff like Famous Five or her less well-known series; I mean, how about this from "the Adventure series" from the Enid Blyton Society website (http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk):

Quote

Jack is a bird-lover obsessed with finding a Great Auk, Philip has the ability to charm animals of all kinds from lizards to bears, Dinah is a feisty, adventurous girl while Lucy-Ann, affectionate and home-loving and not really one for adventures at all, is actually the bravest of the lot. As for Kiki, she has a knack of saying just the right thing at the right time and her mischievous antics brighten many a dark moment.

That sounds pretty pony to me already, really, though I don't remember those particular books. If you click on the titles of the books in each series on there, a lot of the reviews are actually plot synopses - how do you handle a rival 'club' stealing your fireworks, for instance? And why would those bad ponies lie and say it wasn't them, who else could it be? Daffydown is SUCH a meanie, she's even pretending she was visiting her sick granny at the time! She... She IS sick? But... then who..?

I suppose that's more of an "established campaign" plot line, but it's an idea. Doesn't have to be them or the Swallows and Amazons of this world either. To Kill A Mockingbird has a very good "child caught up in adult's stuff" tone and perspective, especially if you want to emphasise the Boo Radley bit rather than the Ewell's.

More contemporary, I'm enjoying reading David Walliam's books (Gangsta Granny, Demon Dentist etc) to my boys and more light heartedly I could see a few Horrid Henry tales working for a change of pace! There's a few other decent kids tv shows to play with too.

In short, watch kids tv and get some decent stuff out the library

ETA: just got the kids a happy meal from maccy d's and they're giving away secret seven stories as the 'toy', so if you're going there anyway...